Observing Child Motor Skills: A Case Study of Genevieve

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Today is Monday, March 6, 2017, I am in room 1 of the Child Discovery Center. The Child I will be observing is Genevieve, age 6. The time is 4:00 pm, and the children are lining up for snack time. Genevieve is helping the lead teacher serve snack. She is handed a plastic glove she grabs with her right hand, holding it in her fist. She positions the glove using her thumb and index fingers on both hand to pinch the sides of the gloves opening, allowing her to open the glove up. She uses her left hand, holding the glove with a closed fist, to pull the glove onto her right hand. She holds a paper plate in her left hand. The plate is resting in her upturned palm, the thumb of her left hand firmly holds the plate down. Using her right hand, she picks up a sandwich half and drops it onto the plate. The sandwich comes apart, and Genevieve uses her thumb and pointer finger on her right hand to pick up …show more content…

When she had lined up the zipper on her coat, she had tried a few times to put them together. She appeared to struggle with it a bit, and she wasn’t able to zip up her coat herself. A teacher in the room zipped it up for her.
Developmental Analysis Overall, it appears to me that Genevieve has good control over her fingertips and handedness. However, I believe she’s lacking a little in the hand-eye coordinations. During the observation, Genevieve had attempted to zip up her own coat. She had tried a few times to zip it up herself, but she couldn’t manage to do so, and a teacher zipped it up for her. In our notes it states that the school age is when children are able to zip, and Genevieve was not able to display that action. There are a few fine motor activities I might suggest to help Genevieve development her skills a bit more. These activities include:
String some beads on a piece of string. This helps the thumb and index finger to work in opposition. Doing so will help Genevieve learn how to zip up her own

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